The Best Death Penalty Documentary Since Fourteen Days in May

Plus seven other excellent, recent(ish) documentaries you'd be mad not to watch. Oh, and three to swerve (with love...)

Of late, I’ve been drowning, arms wide open, in a sea of wild, infuriating, and devastating documentaries. My bangers watchlist growing so rapidly that me and my mate Caz are working out how I can teleport to beneath her settee, popping up to blurt out a recommendation when she sits down of an evening. In the absence of that, there’s this: a list of opinion-heavy, spoiler-free reviews and recommendations. The best (relatively) new documentaries I’ve watched (relatively) recently, including a death penalty documentary that has barged its way onto the Greatest Ever list.

I’ve linked to where to watch in the UK and as there are quite a few of you in the US, I’ve included those details where applicable. Plus, I’ve listed three should-skip docs - AKA Save Your Eyeballs - not because I’m a hater (and I’m always cognisant of people working their arse off on them) but because, as we used to say on Pilot TV, you can’t watch everything. So let me waste my time so you don’t have to. And a final PSA for paid subscribers: I’m six-weeks deep into work on a greatest documentaries of all time mega watchlist - taking in all imaginable sub-genres - and that will be with you soon.

Right.

READY?

I AM READY, WARDEN

Inmate #99954 stares down the barrel and says, “If you are seeing this then obviously the state of Texas has murdered me.” These words open I Am Ready, Warden - Smriti Mundhra’s film documenting the final six days in the life of John Henry Ramirez, the ex-Marine and father sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of convenience store worker and father (of nine) Pablo Castro. And while it only has a run time of thirty-four minutes, and there’s no traditional jeopardy (nope, no eleventh-hour possibility of the Governor calling), the film has an extraordinary velocity due to the unstoppable freight train of his certain execution, plus the tugging tragedy of two fathers and their sons. It’s obviously haunting to watch a man you know is dead alive on screen: hearing the timbre and tenor of Ramirez’s words, seeing the tears shed, the folding of his jaw with emotion. But it’s the sheer restraint in the filmmaking, and old-school commitment to documenting with patience - particularly when capturing Ramirez’s son saying goodbye and the extraordinary response of the victim’s son after Ramirez has been executed - that truly sets this (just nominated for an Oscar) film apart. It’s absolutely up there with Fourteen Days in May and Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss.

Watch on Paramount+ via Prime Video in the UK & Paramount+ in the US

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MURDER ON TRIAL: GIRL IN THE RIVER

In the age of too-often-sensationalist true crime, there’s something oddly reassuring in the approach of Murder Trial, the BBC series following a case as it unfurls in the Scottish High Courts, intercut with largely factual and expositional interviews. The most recent two-parter covers the previously cold case of murdered 14-year-old schoolgirl Caroline Glachan, prosecuted by the now familiar Alex Prentice KC (who, by the way, I have weirdly come to trust more than any man I know). Some of the testimony is hard to follow, many of the witnesses cannot be shown, there’s none of the ‘pull you in by the throat within the first minute and a half’ stuff and my god, who cares. Patience is a virtue (for real).

Watch on iPlayer

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ANATOMY OF LIES

My jaw first hung wide and low when Vanity Fair published this explosive two-part report on the wild (wild) lies of Grey’s Anatomy writer Elisabeth ‘Finchy’ Finch in 2022. The journalist Evgenia Peretz now teaming up with filmmaker husband (David Schisgall) to make this limited series which (fair play) is not just a screen re-treading of the original magazine story, but a more substantive look at the human cost of Finchy’s constructed life. Those paying it primarily: ex-wife Jennifer Beyer and her (spectacular) kids, who granted deep access for this film. And it’s the treatment of this already-fragile family that propels this story from one that’s wild to entirely unconscionable. And, well, you may never trust a writer again. Hell, I’m not sure I trust myself anymore. You shouldn’t either. DON’T LOOK AT ME.

Watch on Sky/NOW in the UK & Peacock in the US

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BOYZONE: NO MATTER WHAT

Okay, sure, news of this series was met with half an eye-roll (by me). I’d watched (and recommended) the very good BBC boyband series last year and well, did we need another look at how thrilling but personhood-rinsing it was to be a boy singing in a group in the 90s and Noughties? Turns out that yes, yes we absofuckinglutely did. And no, I did not have ‘That Boyzone documentary will shred your black heart and despatch the strips down into the bowels of hell to serve as replacements for Louis Walsh’s long-destroyed coattails’ on my 2025 bingo card but hey, life is a rollercoaster, you’ve just gotta ride it. I promised you no spoilers up top so I’ll simply say: Louis Walsh (boo!), Steveo (*puts a window through on his behalf*), Stevo (sob!), Shane and Keith (lovely lads, so they are), Ronan (boo! Yay! I’m so confused! But also why were you a producer DO YOU NEVER LEARNNNNN RONAN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD), Mikey Graham (my heart!). And man, I love a documentary that has the balls to leave you with a pile of unresolved issues on screen and feelings off (unless they’re setting you up for a hypothetical second series and then it’s war. Unless I then like the second series, obviously. Look, I’m a complicated woman). Anyway, sorry, where was I…Just watch it (don't fight it, fight it, fight it, na, na, na, na, na).

Watch on Sky/NOW

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AVICII: I’M TIM

So, I know very little of Avicii, I know even less about EDM (um, beep beep?). But this film is a fascinating examination of the danger present when creativity and hardcore commercialism collide, and a deeply human (and humane) look at a son and friend inside one of the world’s biggest artists and most prodigious producers. It’s the story of Tim Bergling, that same son and friend who took his own life in 2018. It’s not the first Avicii documentary but arguably it’s the first to prioritise Tim - evidenced by the rare cooperation of his family - and one that tries to give him voice through never-before-seen personal footage and contributions from his (still clearly undone) parents. Truthfully, I just wanted to protect him and his talents from the awful awful world.

Watch on Netflix

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JERRY SPRINGER: FIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

If you’re concerned that shows like Jerry Springer exploited (working-class, marginalised) people (“Woman in labour confronts mistress!”, “I’m a 14-Year-Old Prostitute!”, “Klanfrontation!”) and caused long-term harm with little conscience or care, then this show will confirm your concern as cold hard fact. Talking about cold and hard, the documentary features interviews with producers and bookers who still, years on - beyond flying weaves and nails - appear either unable to understand the consequences of what they created, or are just entirely unrepentant. And while it’s easy to dismiss this as a cultural horror relegated to the 90s, here’s 45,000 words from me on how the worst of contemporary true crime is exploitation of those same people in a fancier frock. Does any of this mean you shouldn’t watch it? Absolutely not. And much like Channel 4’s Jeremy Kyle documentary, this two-parter is most powerful when revealing the disturbing detail of behind-the-scenes manipulation and the impact on a single human life.

Watch on Netflix

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ACCUSED: THE FAKE GROOMING SCANDAL

I’ve always struggled to see how you could make a documentary from the Ellie Williams case (the Barrow woman convicted of perverting the course of justice after falsely accusing local men of grooming, rape and torture) that wasn’t sensationalist or deeply irresponsible - but this might actually be it. Largely as the series doesn’t attempt to land easy answers or even easy narratives, and as the three episodes are built around interviews with the men she victimised and their accounts of exactly how their lives were - are still - ruined. It is, in truth, a story of racism and xenophobia, of trauma, of those left behind, the communities used as playthings by the right while those who are meant to represent us look away.

Watch on Channel 4

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LIFE AND DEATH ROW

The fourth series of this impeccably-made documentary series just dropped and it’s as knotty and head-shredding as ever. Since starting in 2014, Life and Death Row has showed the death penalty - the lives ended to receive it, those on the line as it’s carried out - from every perspective. The prisoners, the victims, prosecutors, spiritual advisers, the lawyers, the families of the victims, politicians, law enforcement and the families of the convicted. Each case, each story, building a tapestry of the death penalty, systemic flaws and all. Each case asking difficult questions on justice, revenge, and redemption. John Henry Ramirez was actually featured in Series 3, four years before he was eventually put to death - an episode which now serves as a prologue of sorts to I Am Ready, Warden.

Watch on iPlayer in the UK & on BBC World in the US

PLUS! Save Your Eyeballs (Three to skip, with love…)

1/An Update On Our Family (Sky Documentaries/NOW)

A complex adoption/family-vlogging story that on screen suffers narratively through lack of access, relying on a (super charming and compelling but random) YouTube viewer to map out events.

2/Face to Face With Scott Petersen (Sky Documentaries/NOW)

This is not the first documentary to employ bias as a narrative device (or one essentially seeking to litigate), but given that Lacey Peterson and her unborn son were brutally murdered and disposed of, here it’s in particularly bad taste. There’s (obviously) absolutely a way to interrogate convictions with integrity (and balance), but this ain’t it.

3/Britain’s Benefits Scandal (Channel 4)

I take back almost all of what I said previously when it comes to this film. I am 100% a hater (as I said here).

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Comment and tell me the recent docs I’ve missed!